As attorneys recapped evidence Wednesday during closing arguments in a Ventura County murder trial, the defense asked jurors to pay attention to the facts the evidence supports and not the prosecution’s theory.

The prosecution and defense spent about two hours each making their final cases in the trial of Wilson Chouest, 66. The defendant is facing three counts of murder in the death of a woman found in a Kern County almond orchard on July 15, 1980, and a pregnant woman found dead three days later in the upper parking lot of Westlake High School in Thousand Oaks. It is further alleged that he committed multiple murders with the use of a deadly weapon and that the killings were carried out during the commission of a rape and robbery.

The slain women have never been identified and are referred to as Kern County Jane Doe and Ventura County Jane Doe.

Chouest has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His defense attorney, Chief Deputy Public Defender Andre Nintcheff, asked jurors to start their deliberations from the presumption of innocence. He said undoubtedly the testimony and crime scene photos struck a chord with jurors, and that’s natural. But he asked them to be aware of how that may affect their decision-making.

“What we want do is put on the most neutral lens we have so we’re fair,” Nintcheff said.

In his closing arguments, Senior Deputy District Attorney John Barrick said the evidence is clear and tells jurors the women were robbed, raped and stabbed, then taken to an area where their bodies were dumped. The Kern County victim was likely killed first due in part to a directive Chouest allegedly gave to the sons of a pen pal he was living with at the time, Barrick argued. The sons testified they were told to clean up blood in Chouest’s vehicle after the defendant said he hit a deer.

However, one of the sons testified that Chouest allegedly confessed to him about killing a “broad” near Bakersfield. The son also said he was given a knife to clean. Due to the lack of blood at the Ventura County crime scene, Barrick argued that the sons likely cleaned up the Ventura County victim’s blood.

Nintcheff said there was no evidence of blood in Chouest’s vehicle when it was impounded months later during his arrest for crimes in August and Septemer 1980. He called the sons’ testimony just a “story,” saying it didn’t happen and was never brought up or talked about until the homicide investigations were renewed once Chouest’s DNA was discovered.

Jurors were asked to consider a different set of circumstances regarding the murder charge related to Ventura County Jane Doe’s male fetus. The law states it is murder if the fetus was viable outside the womb. Jurors have heard differing testimony about whether the fetus would have survived.

Much was disputed between the attorneys Wednesday, including the credibility of doctors who examined the victims and their conclusions about whether the women were raped. However, one element of the evidence not in contention was the discovery of DNA that in 2012 gave new life to the cold cases.

The DNA profile from semen found on the Ventura County victim’s body and clothing was uploaded to a database containing DNA profiles of people arrested and convicted across the country, and it matched a state prison inmate named Wilson Chouest. Unbeknownst to local investigators, DNA analysis from biological evidence found on the Kern County victim was done in 2008 and also matched Chouest. When the cases were connected in 2012, Ventura County took over the investigation.

Chouest came up in the databse because he is serving a life sentence for convictions of robbery, kidnapping and rape for crimes committed in August and September 1980 in Tulare County. He had also served a prison stint years earlier for a 1977 conviction of assault and kidnapping for a case in the Topanga Canyon area of Los Angeles County.

Barrick has argued that Chouest’s prior convictions further point to him as the perpetrator but told jurors Wednesday that the DNA by itself was strong enough to afford a conviction. The strongest DNA matches came from Chouest's semen, which was found on the women.

But the DNA doesn’t necessarily place Chouest where the women were found, Nintcheff said. The semen could have been from a previous consensual sexual encounter, he said. He also said the discovery of Chouest’s DNA on a Michelob beer bottle found next to Kern County Jane Doe may have gotten there from the mishandling of evidence. In previous testimony, jurors learned it was not practice for Kern County investigators to wear gloves while collecting evidence back in 1980.

“We can’t surmise one story from the DNA,” Nintcheff said, saying there is more than one.

The prosecutor said the only way the defense’s argument makes sense is if jurors believe there was consensual sex. If that is the case, Barrick said, it was just “bad luck” that someone later stabbed the two women Chouest had sex with.

Barrick also said there was no evidence of consensual sex in the case. He said witness testimony from Drs. Peter Speth, Silvia Comparini and Bruce Woodling indicated the women were raped close to the time of their death. There were also defensive wounds on both victims, who were stabbed multiple times. Kern County Jane Doe’s blood alcohol level was about 0.30 percent, which Barrick argued meant she wasn’t able to fight off her attacker as much as Ventura County Jane Doe could.

Forensic pathologists Speth and Comparini, who conducted the autopsies of the victims, testified there was evidence the women were raped. Woodling, an obstetrician-gynecologist who worked with the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office in 1980 to determine whether a woman had been raped, also came to that conclusion.

Although Speth did not testify during the trial, there was a video of his testimony during a preliminary hearing a few years earlier.

Nintcheff spent a good amount of his closing arguments attacking the doctors’ credibility. He told jurors to consider Speth’s unwillingness to testify in the trial because he didn’t want to answer questions about his license being suspended for a time. Barrick conceded to jurors that the situation was “weird” but told them the incident happened years after the 1980 homicides.

The defense attorney also targeted Comparini’s testimony about her conclusion regarding the sexual assault, saying she could not cite the reasons she came to that opinion.

But of the three doctors, Nintcheff had the most criticism for Woodling. He said Woodling had no medical background regarding examination of dead bodies to say whether an injury found on Ventura County Jane Doe occurred before or after death. Nintchef argued that his testimony regarding other evidence related to rape was not founded.

Nintcheff also said jurors should consider the differences in the opinions both Speth and Woodling gave about the purported injury on the woman’s body. Speth called it a discoloration and Woodling called it an abrasion. The defense attorney also called into question their findings due to the doctors’ relationship with the district attorney’s office.

Barrick, on the other hand, said the testimony stands up and in consideration with the totality of the evidence supports his theory.

The trial is now in the hands of jurors, who headed behind closed doors Wednesday afternoon to begin deliberations.

While Nintcheff asked jurors to keep an open mind and consider all the evidence, Barrick stuck to his theory he said is supported by the evidence. He asked jurors to give the women the only thing they have left: justice.